Surrrrvey says....

  It's a bit of a bummer when 3rd party workers badmouth your coworkers and past shipmates, and you know they're in the right.  On one hand, there's the company rep. Nobody likes being thought of as being on Team Loser, and you want to defend the name; not because you're a company man so much as the tendency of splattered shit to get on your shoes from even a distance. 

        Oil tankers and oil barges use 3rd party surveyors to verify our numbers...  easier to give an example than to explain offhand, so...

       Incedentally, blogfriend BCE at Big Country Expat has a kid who's a cargo surveyor back home in FL. 

   Let's say an oil company has an order for 2,500 metric tons of fuel oil to bunker a ship (to fill their own fuel tanks to run their engines and generators, not to fill cargo tanks).  That's about 700,000 gallons, btb. Before we start loading, I drop a measuring tape into all my cargo tanks and write down the height of any liquid in my tanks, as measured from the oil surface to the rim of that tank's measuring port (called the ullage port). Every 1/8 inch of the tank height corresponds to a certain volume in thst tank. A specialized company calculates that officially before the vessel enters service- this is called 'strapping' the tanks, and a strapping company must be recognized officially as being impeccably honest.  The density and temperature of the liquid to go in the tank is measured before the transfer, as these things affect the mass of the oil consoderably, and oil is sold by mass, not volume. Yea, at your gas station too. A gallon sold is (supposed to be) a net gallon, and adjusted for temperature and density; a net gallon is corrected for density and temperature based on what that density would be if the temperature was 60 degrees, not a gross gallon, which is a unit of volume.  

 At any rate before we load, I calculate the volume of oil in my tanks, if any, and given the temperature and density of the oil to be loaded, I calculate what the height would be in each of my tanks if we loaded oil and corrected the volume for temperature and density. 

   So I now have my 'stops,' the target height I want the oil to be at in my tanks.  In the meanwhile. The owner of the oil hires a 3rd party cargo inspector to remeasure my tanks and sign to verify the numbers are correct. The surveyor also measures the volume in the tanks that contain the oil that I am to load.

        On completion of loading, the cargo surveyor will AGAIN measure the tanks ashore, and then he and I will together measure my cargo tanks for volume and temperature, witnessing each other input the figures in our computers. Our numbers must agree. If they do not, we have to seek out any discrepancies until they do.   The surveyor will do the exact same thing with the tanks ashore. There will always be a small difference between shore tank figures and my tank figures. There will be tiny errors in the calculated volume of the pipelines between the shore tank and the dock where my hoses connect, air bubbles can be in the pipelines, a little oil might be left in my cargo hoses (which hold about 3/4 ton each when full) etc etc.  Point being, I can't be given clearance to leave until our numbers between my tanks and the shoreside tanks agree very closely- and by very closely I mean within a few tons. Yes, our rounding errors are enough for you to drive your car for a year or more. 

      So that is a 3rd party cargo surveyor's role; to be an impartial verifier of the numbers.

   The oil company has a surveyor on loading up the HQ.

     The ship that ordered their fuel will have ANOTHER cargo surveyor usually from another company, to do the same process between my tanks and the ship's tanks. Sometimes there is no surveyor, in which case one of the ship's engineers will come aboard the HQ and he and I will remeasure the volumes together, before and after the transfer.

     Now, I wrote all that and threw in some of the process not to be pedantic but to illustrate that it is not a complex process but it IS a process. 

        And a cargo surveyor I know was bitching to my partner B that a tankerman on another oil barge, a guy we all know is an utter fucking retard and a shit magnet of a God-damned Jonah besides, who somehow the company loves, fucked the surveyor over and lied to him, creating not a crisis, but some serious ill will sufficient that the surveyor's employer now looks at all of us from my company with a jaundiced eye. And that shit is a bummer to me because most of my old fart coworkers are honest and good boy scouts... but this guy's such a fucking soup sandwich that he drove a superior into a full on psychotic break one time. Not even exaggerating a little. 

   Anyways I'm aware that I'm playing with fire, bad mouthing a co-worker online. I'm a wee bit protective of my company's rep because I really like money and they give it to me sometimes, and I really enjoy when they do so I'd like it to continue and increase. Amen. 

     I have the same surveyor coming to my next ship. At least he and I have a couple dozen good loads under our belts. have a good history working together.